Today’s prompt: “A beginner’s guide to winning over your in-laws”
Today’s prompt: “A beginner’s guide to complete satisfaction”
If you look at it from a purely biological standpoint, no one can ever truly be satisfied. You can eat, but you’ll just get hungry again. You can drink, but you’ll just get thirsty again. You can never be truly sated. There’s really only one way to be completely satisfied: do the thing you like to do best, and then immediately die.
Have the best meal of your life, and then die.
Have the best sex of your life, and then die.
Have the best concert/hang gliding experience/base jumping session/whitewater rafting trip/insert your favorite euphoric activity here that you’ve ever had, and then die.
Dying immediately afterwards, before the banality of everyday life has a chance to drown out your bliss, is really important. And fortunately for you, it’s completely taken care of, thanks to those well-placed assassins.
Today’s prompt: “A beginner’s guide to skipping out of work”
Today’s prompt: “Think of the most frightening experience anyone has ever related to you – a carjacking, a dogfight, a robbery – and imagine what it must have been like to be personally involved. Start with the experience in real time.”
The sun should start to set in about half an hour. It’ll be dark by the time you and Maverick get back from your run, but that’s all right. It’ll give the air a chance to cool down, there won’t be as many people around, and you’ve got a flashlight on your phone if you need it.
The dust along the trail puffs into the air beneath your sneakers and Maverick’s paws. Your legs keep time with your workout playlist.
There’s not much on this path – no shade trees, no streams or canals, just a series of sagebrush-covered foothills with a few different species of scraggly wildflowers interspersed throughout. But it’s one of the longest off-leash trails in your part of the city.
Maverick has been running back and forth along the trail in front of you, but now he looks at you expectantly. You pull a filthy tennis ball from your bag and chuck it down the trail, trying to keep it on the path so he won’t tear up the native flora or get goat heads in his paws. Maverick burns down the path toward the ball, grabs it on the second bounce, and trots back to you.
You wrestle the ball out of Maverick’s mouth and toss it again. The ball bounces, then rolls along the trail, and the trail dust adheres to Maverick’s slobber. He brings the ball to you, and as you try to take it away from his still closed jaws, you wonder again at this devil’s bargain that leaves you pulling a ball you do not want from a dog that does not want to give it to you.
You throw the ball again. It bounces to the right of the path, a few yards off, and rolls out of view. Maverick bounds after it. As you pound along the trail, you expect him to emerge from the sagebrush any second, but he doesn’t.
You slow your pace as you approach the part of the trail where you last saw Mav. You spot him – butt up in the air, head down, tail wagging. And then you hear the sound. A rattler.
The snake is coiled, ready to strike, but Maverick is reacting like it’s a plaything. Even if the snake is prepared to drop the whole thing – which doesn’t seem likely at this moment – and go back into its hole, Maverick looks intent on digging the snake back up.
If we get out of this thing, you think, I am enrolling you in snake avoidance training first thing tomorrow, Maverick.
“Maverick! Come here, Mav!” you call. Your dog ignores you and play bites at the snake, barely avoiding the snake’s jaws as it moves to return the favor for real.
You grab the treat pouch from your bag and shake it. “Here, Maverick! Leave that alone! Come here!” Maverick doesn’t even glance your way – just barks enthusiastically at the snake.
Okay. Just need to try to keep as much distance as possible between you and the snake while you grab Maverick’s collar and pull him out of there. You walk in a wide circle, approaching the side of Maverick opposite the rattler.
You’re so focused on what’s going on in front of you, you don’t even hear the second snake until you’re right on top of it. As the venom courses through your system, you wish you’d picked a shorter trail.
Today’s prompt: “An argument at Sunday dinner”
“Well, I don’t know why everyone talks about how difficult fugu is to prepare,” your dad says. “One of the easier dishes I’ve made.”
“What?” you say. “Dad, how was this fish sourced?”
“You and your namby-pamby farm-to-table whosawhatsits,” your dad says. “Just eat the fish.”
“I already ate some. That’s what I’m worried about. Did you make sure this is farm-raised fugu that isn’t poisonous?”
“I’m sure they wouldn’t sell it if it was poisonous.”
“You can’t be too careful about these kinds of things!”
Your mom sighs. “Can’t you just enjoy your father’s cooking without making a big deal out of everything?”
Today’s prompt: “A straight-A high-school student is caught stealing something at school by a teacher.”
It was a good year at St. Augustine. For most staff and students, this was because the football team was looking to take state for the 8th year in a row. For Douglas McKee, literature teacher and debate coach, it was because Deja Jones had finally agreed to join the debate team.
Deja was one of the sharpest students he’d had in years. She could run rings around her opponents logically and managed to bend the arcane debate rule system to her advantage. And she had a fire in her belly that was a thing to behold. When she made an impassioned case for reparations at the regional semifinals, Doug could have sworn the judges’ mouths were hanging open in astonishment.
Doug was willing to bet there would be a topic on policing at the finals. He hoped they would get the BLM side, but knew Deja could successfully argue either, even if one of them was distasteful to her.
It was about 8:00. Doug had stayed late to grade some papers and was just walking toward the parking lot when he heard something down the hallway to the main entrance.
He turned the corner. There, in front of the trophy case, was Deja. A pair of bolt cutters and a broken lock were on the ground next to her, and she was lifting a large trophy cup out of the cabinet.
“Deja? What are you doing?” Doug asked.
“Mr. McKee!” Deja dropped the cup. Your ashes spilled out.
“What is this?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Doug looked uncomfortable. “You know I’m going to have to report this.”
“Okay.” Deja paused. “Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Look, I don’t want to have to get you in trouble for stealing.”
“I don’t think stealing is what you need to be worried about here, Mr. McKee,” Deja said. “What you ought to worry about is who those cremains are, and how they got into that cup.”
“Those are cremains?” Doug asked uncertainly.
“They are.”
“How do you know that?”
“For the same reason I knew they were here. And I can’t tell you that. Now. Think about how they got there. Who has access to this cabinet?”
“The principal. And the head coach.”
“So who could have put the ashes in there?”
“The principal or the head coach.”
“Exactly. Are either of those people you would feel comfortable accusing of doing something untoward with human remains?”
Doug breathed in deeply. The principal could fire him. And Coach Henderson was one of the most popular members of the community, thanks to the football team’s winning streak. Making outlandish accusations about the coach putting human remains in a trophy cabinet would probably not go well for him. And Deja’s question of whose cremains these were made him wonder about his own safety if he revealed to either of the men that he knew too much.
“Not especially,” he said.
“All right. Now I’m just going to get these ashes out of here for now. This weekend I’ll take a trip out of town and spread them someplace nice.” Deja emptied the remaining ashes from the trophy cup into a gallon Ziplock bag, and then placed the cup back in the cabinet and began sweeping up the ashes on the floor with some paper towels from her pocket.
“What about the lock?” Doug asked.
“I brought a new one,” Deja said, fishing the new padlock – in the same style as the old one, and still in its packaging – out of her pocket. “Hopefully they won’t try to get in right away since none of their keys will fit it. Hopefully they’ll just figure they lost the key and call a locksmith.”
“Here. Give me the key,” Doug heard himself say. Deja gave him a quizzical look. “It’s going to be suspicious if they’re both missing a copy of the key. But I can probably sneak this into one of their desk drawers. Maybe even onto their key ring if I get lucky.”
Deja opened the lock’s packaging and handed the key to Doug. She returned to sweeping up the ash.
Doug started to leave, but turned back after a few steps. “Deja?”
“Hmmm?” she said.
“I’m sure it goes without saying that we say nothing about this from this moment on.”
“Of course.”
St. Augustine’s football team lost the rest of the games in their season. But the debate team won regionals.
Today’s prompt: “You’re in the interview stage of the Miss America pageant. Besides your desire for world peace, what will you tell the judges?”
“Miss Arizona, the Old Ones have recently appeared on Earth, destroying whole cities and causing mass casualties. What can Americans do to counter this looming threat? You have 20 seconds.”1
“Well,” you respond in your stunning midnight blue evening gown, “appeasement is out of the question since the Old Ones have an insatiable hunger for human flesh, and we have no leverage over them since they are impervious to our weaponry. It doesn’t help that many Americans, including several contestants in this pageant who I saw chanting backstage, are serving them to obtain power, which is misguided since the Old Ones eat cultists and civilians alike. I fear there’s little we can do, since this building trembles at their approach. Also, I find the fact that I have to answer this after being judged in my swimwear demeaning.”
What, you don’t think a question like this would be fair game at a Miss America pageant, that it’s all about young women vaguely wishing for world peace? Not so much. And by the way, it’s still a great idea to donate to the Society for Women Engineers. ↩